‘Tiger Nageswara Rao’ movie review: Director Vamsee’s biopic-style film starring Ravi Teja begins with promise and withers into an overdrawn, generic tale – The Hindu
When director Vamsee’s ambitiously mounted Telugu movie Tiger Nageswara Rao (TNR) begins with a word ‘impressed from true rumours’ and a voiceover informs us that it’s a story of blood and tears, it signifies the tone of the movie. Ravi Teja performs the title character impressed by the real-life dacoit of Stuartpuram in Andhra Pradesh, Nageswara Rao who earned the moniker ‘tiger’ for his daredevil acts. Within the absence of considerable documentation, the director and his workforce relied on accounts shared by the late dacoit’s spouse and some others within the village and the police. Sharing the writing credit with Srikanth Vissa, Vamsee makes an attempt to unravel the murky sociopolitical story of Stuartpuram and its infamous thief. A narrative like this might ideally be complicated with gray areas. However this movie presents black and white characters and the promising narrative is progressively diluted into an oft-repeated mainstream story.
A biopic-style presentation of a dacoit would warrant jaw-dropping sequences that set up his ingenuity in pulling off inconceivable duties. The occasions are set within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s and we’re launched to the story of Nageswara Rao via Guntur-based police officer Vishwanath Sastry (Murali Sharma). There’s a sense of urgency with which he recounts the exploits of the dacoit to a gaggle of top-ranking police and intelligence officers within the nation. The primary large episode introducing the Stuartpuram donga aka Ravi Teja on display is a practice theft. R Madhi’s cinematography, GV Prakash Kumar’s music and the modifying create an adrenaline rush. However the sub par visible results are an enormous dampener.
Tiger Nageswara Rao (Telugu)
Regardless of that, Vamsee manages to maintain issues attention-grabbing for a while, because of the darkish characterisation of the dacoit. Occasions that unfold in his childhood supposedly make him a monster, setting the stage for an attention-grabbing story. For some time, it seems as if the makers are attempting to relate the story of a person who stops at nothing to get his loot. His rise is fuelled by poverty and the determined want for energy to outlive. He finds himself locked in what seems to be a lifelong battle with a neighborhood politician, Yelamanda (Hareesh Peradi) and a devilish police officer (Jisshu Sengupta). That is additionally a narrative of a hamlet and its hapless individuals caught within the iron grip of money-minting highly effective males. It’s a acquainted template.
Vamsee traces the rise of Nageswara Rao via a string of heists that may have been extra attention-grabbing on paper than on display. The Chennai port theft and his escape from jail are among the many few sequences that comparatively make a mark. Appreciably, the makers enable the smattering of Hindi, English and Tamil because the story progresses. Avinash Kolla’s manufacturing design accentuates the gritty milieu. Rao’s supposedly daring feat on the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi may have been a lot smarter.
In Stuartpuram the place there’s no dearth of males who’re brutes, there is no such thing as a house for girls to guide a lifetime of dignity. Early on we see a intercourse employee being abused and violently handled in public. A lot later somebody unleashes sexual violence on one other lady. The titular dacoit himself, at first, is introduced as a brutish character who broadcasts that Sara (Nupur Sanon), a college-going lady he barely is aware of, is his ‘property’. One may argue that nothing higher will be anticipated of him; but, stalking being handed off as a lamely-written romance doesn’t augur effectively.
The 181-minute-long movie manages to carry curiosity till halfway. When the covert operation for TNR begins, the narrative turns right into a Robin Hood story. Every of his darkish acts proven within the first a part of the movie is defined from one other angle, portray a humane picture of him. At one level a personality urges one other to take heed to Ravana’s story from the individuals of Lanka.
We’re instructed TNR desires to be an agent of change and helps schooling however his battles and people of the village are removed from over. Whereas exhibiting the transformation within the village, the movie makes each character seem both white or black with no room for complexities. We additionally get repetitive sequences of massacre. A number of limbs are chopped off and heads roll.
Ravi Teja is stoic and convincing in his portrayal of a person hardened by circumstances. Others, like Care of Kancharapalem Shiva and the main woman Gayatri Bharadwaj who portrays TNR’s spouse, get a number of moments to make their presence felt. Nasser, Murali Sharma and Anupam Kher (as an intelligence officer) add credibility with their presence however have little to do. Renu Desai seems in a cameo as social reformer Hemalatha Lavanam.
In the direction of the tip, the movie inevitably glorifies the dacoit and his each motion. Historical past is complicated and so is fact. I simply wished the movie hadn’t watered down all the pieces right into a generic Robin Hood story.
Tiger Nageswara Rao is at present operating in theatres
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